Monday, February 24, 2014

Success 2014: Petula Clark, an English singer, actress, and composer that sold more than 68 million records. During the 1960s she became known globally for her popular upbeat hits, including "Downtown", "I Know a Place", "My Love", "Colour My World", "A Sign of the Times", and "Don't Sleep in the Subway"

Petula Sally Olwen Clark, CBE (born 15 November 1932) is an English singer, actress, and composer whose career has spanned seven decades.
Clark's professional career began as an entertainer on BBC Radio during World War II. During the 1950s she started recording in French and having international success in both French and English, with such songs as "The Little Shoemaker", "Baby Lover", "With All My Heart", and "Prends Mon Cœur". During the 1960s she became known globally for her popular upbeat hits, including "Downtown", "I Know a Place", "My Love", "Colour My World", "A Sign of the Times", and "Don't Sleep in the Subway". She has sold more than 68 million records throughout her career.

Clark was born to an English father, Leslie Norman Clark, and a Welsh mother, Doris (Phillips) Clark. Both were nurses at Long Grove Hospital, in Epsom, Surrey, England. Her father invented her first name and joked it was a combination of the names of two former girlfriends, Pet and Ulla.
As a child, Clark sang in the chapel choir and showed a talent for mimicry, impersonating Vera Lynn, Carmen Miranda and Sophie Tucker for her family and friends. Her father introduced her to theatre when he took her to see Flora Robson in a 1938 production of Mary Tudor; she later recalled that after the performance "I made up my mind then and there I was going to be an actress ... I wanted to be Ingrid Bergman more than anything else in the world." However, her first public performances were as a singer, performing with an orchestra in the entrance hall of Bentall's Department Store in Kingston upon Thames for a tin of toffee and a gold wristwatch, in 1939.
Career start
From a chance beginning as a nine-year-old, Clark would appear on radio, film, print, television and recordings by the time she turned seventeen.
In October 1942, nine-year-old Clark made her radio debut while attending a BBC broadcast with her father. Attending in the hope of sending a message to an uncle stationed overseas, the broadcast was delayed by an air raid. During the bombing, the producer requested that someone perform to settle the jittery theatre audience, and she volunteered a rendering of "Mighty Lak' a Rose" to an enthusiastic response. She then repeated her performance for the broadcast audience, launching a series of some 500 appearances in programmes designed to entertain the troops.[5] In addition to radio work, Clark frequently toured the United Kingdom with fellow child performer Julie Andrews. Nicknamed the "Singing Sweetheart", she performed for George VI, Winston Churchill and Bernard Montgomery. Clark also became known as "Britain's Shirley Temple," and was considered a mascot by the British Army, whose troops plastered her photos on their tanks for good luck as they advanced into battle.
In 1944, while performing at London's Royal Albert Hall, Clark was discovered by film director Maurice Elvey, who cast her as precocious orphaned waif Irma in his weepy war drama Medal for the General. In quick succession, she starred in Strawberry Roan, I Know Where I'm Going!, London Town, and Here Come the Huggetts, the first in a series of Huggett Family films based on a British radio series. Although some of the films she made in the UK during the 1940s and 1950s were B-films,[citation needed] she worked with Anthony Newley in Vice Versa (directed by Peter Ustinov) and Alec Guinness in The Card as well as the aforementioned I Know Where I'm Going! which is a Powell and Pressburger feature film now generally regarded as a masterpiece (Clark's part was small).
In 1945, Clark was featured in the comic strip Radio Fun, in which she was billed as "Radio's Merry Mimic".
In 1946, Clark launched her television career with an appearance on a BBC variety show, Cabaret Cartoons, which led to her being signed to host her own afternoon series, titled simply Petula Clark. A second, Pet's Parlour, followed in 1949.
In 1947, Clark met Joe "Mr Piano" Henderson at the Maurice Publishing Company. The two collaborated musically, and were linked romantically over the coming decade. In 1949, Henderson introduced Clark to Alan A. Freeman, who, together with her father Leslie, formed Polygon Records, for which she recorded her earliest hits. Clark had recorded her first release that year, "Put Your Shoes On, Lucy," for EMI. Because neither EMI nor Decca, for whom she also had recorded, were keen to sign her to a long-term contract, her father, whose own theatrical ambitions had been thwarted by his parents, teamed with Freeman to form the Polygon record label in order to better control and facilitate her singing career.[citation needed] This project was financed with Clark's earnings. She scored a number of major hits in the UK during the 1950s, including "The Little Shoemaker" (1954), "Majorca" (1955), "Suddenly There's a Valley" (1955) and "With All My Heart" (1956).'The Little Shoemaker' was an international hit reaching the coveted No 1 position in Australia, giving her the first of many No 1 records in her career. Although Clark released singles in the United States as early as 1951 (the first was "Tell Me Truly" b/w "Song Of The Mermaid" on the Coral label),[citation needed] it would take thirteen years before the American record-buying public would discover her.[citation needed]
Near the end of 1955, Polygon Records was sold to Nixa Records, then part of Pye Records, which led to the establishment of Pye Nixa Records (subsequently simply Pye). This turn of events effectively signed Clark to the Pye label in the UK, for whom she would record for the remainder of the 1950s, throughout the 1960s, and early into the 1970s.[citation needed]
During this period, Clark showed a keen interest for encouraging new talent. She suggested Henderson be allowed to record his own music, and he enjoyed five chart hits on Polygon/Pye between 1955 and 1960.




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